34. How To Feel Better In Your Body
Ready to transform your relationship with your body? Join Jess, on this solo episode of Sturdy Girl as I uncover the secrets to feeling good in our bodies, especially during those summer months. Fresh from a rejuvenating girls' retreat in Lake Tahoe and inspired by a client's marathon in Colorado, I dive deep into the importance of internal work for achieving true body confidence. We’ll explore the concept of body image flexibility, a powerful tool that helps us maintain a positive view of our bodies, regardless of external influences. This approach empowers us to experience joy, feel alive, and live the big, rad life we all deserve.
But that's not all—we'll also discuss a holistic approach to health and wellness, emphasizing the importance of hydration, exercise, nutrition, sleep, and mindfulness. Learn how societal influences shape our body image and discover actionable steps to improve self-care. Imagine caring for your body like a resilient house, one that stands strong against the pressures of the world. Tune in to get inspired by our Sturdy Girl challenge and start reclaiming your body confidence today.
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Speaker NamesJessHost
00:09
Hello, friend, and welcome to Sturdy Girl, a podcast focused on strength, not size, where you will hear conversations around flexible body image, cultivating confidence and being a resilient human in both body and mind. Sturdy Girl is the podcast where we shift the focus away from your appearance and on to living the big, rad life you deserve. I'm your host, Jess Heiss, dropping episodes every Friday with my co-host, Megan, as we help you make the most of your Sturdy Girl summer. That is, reclaiming body confidence, wearing the swimsuit and doing the kinds of activities you want without letting your body or appearance hold you back.
JessHost
00:47
Hello, my sturdy friends, and welcome back to episode 34 of Sturdy Girl. This is another solo episode with me, jess, because I am the ultimate procrastinator. It is the day before this episode drops and we are finally recording. My ass got knocked out with COVID and we're finally on the up and up. You can hear it in my voice a little bit, but this message was too important for me to try to put off for a week and also lessons learned. Right, I shouldn't be such a procrastinator. But here we are. I want to talk about how to feel better in your body and this, especially in the summertime, feels so freaking timely. I just got back from a girls retreat in Lake Tahoe and then a week before that, I was in Colorado for a client's first freaking marathon and I just the opportunity for talking about feeling good in your body and noticing how others behave in their bodies showed me just how important this message is. So here we are Again, solo. I will do my best not to ramble too much. I don't have Megan here to keep me in check. I do have Finn hanging out with me in the corner, but he just thinks it's great when I'm talking to him.
01:56
Okay, how hard is it to feel good in our bodies? How hard is it to feel like we are doing the things to take care of our bodies that we need to do to feel good in our skin? Does it feel like work to keep ourselves from spiraling downwards? Because we all want to feel good and feel better in our bodies, I feel like sometimes it's a bait and switch when we have these episodes of how to feel better in your body and feeling better in our bodies. It comes from internal work first. Sure, we can wear the clothes that fit well and feel good. We can find our style and learn to just have fun wearing whatever we want, accessorizing in a way that feels fun, or just learn to feel totally free and comfortable to do all or none of that. What we're focusing on today is the internal work to help us feel better in our bodies so that we have the skills necessary to be a sturdy human. From putting on that bikini to climbing that mountain, to mustering the confidence to ask for a promotion that you've worked your ass off for, all of that matters, and all of that comes from learning to feel good and feel better inside our bodies. You'll notice in this upcoming discussion that none of this is about our actual appearance. The goal here isn't to learn to love your appearance, though that could be a good bonus, right, we're not against that. The goal also isn't to feel good in your body all of the time. We are human. We know that there are good days and bad.
03:22
Feeling better in your body is to experience joy. It is to feel fully alive, to live the big life that you want. That is what feeling better in our body is. I like to think of it this way your body is your home. You buy a house and you make it a home. Your body is your vessel, your meat sack, to experience this world. How do you make it feel like home? How do you make it so you feel safe, feel comfortable in that home? That is what this episode is about, because you deserve to live the life you want to live. Do the things you want to do without letting your meat sack hold you back.
03:58
Okay, first thing that we're going to talk about in feeling better in our bodies, it involves two things, and that's what you're going to see in this discussion and this list of things, if you will. It involves taking care of our brains and taking care of our bodies. Now, I know it's not that simple, but that is where the overarching theme of this comes down to. So let's talk about taking care of our brains first. The big main thing here and it is such a core part of Sturdy Girl and living a Sturdy Girl life and that is practicing body image flexibility. We've talked about negative body image. We talked about neutral body image and positive body image, body image flexibility. Think of like those I don't even know what they're called like those little blow up stick figure dudes that are at car lots, that get blown up and then they blow around in the wind and they're all bendy. Okay, flexibility makes me think of that.
04:48
Body image flexibility is like being able to bend and change depending on the situation that you're in. It means that at the core of it, you've worked on that relationship with yourself and you feel pretty good in your body most of the time, but that we still know that there are triggers and there are times when we just reach for body image neutrality or maybe it is positivity in certain circumstances. That body image flexibility it gives you the ability to prioritize your own first-person perspective on your amazing body, regardless of how you look or how you or others feel about your looks. That difference is crucial. Body image literally does not give a shit what your body actually looks like Size 8 or 18, it doesn't matter. The work is in your brain. The struggle is in your brain cells, not the number of fat cells. If you want a bigger, deep dive on body image flexibility, you can go all the way back to episode one, which is titled what is body image. You can also go back to episode 16. It's titled how I stopped hating my body and what I leaned into instead, and that gives a great overview as well of body image flexibility and how to actually apply it.
05:59
Okay, and then next part of this taking care of our brains. One huge part of feeling better in our body is getting to know ourselves. I know we talk about this a lot on the podcast and I could probably get some eye rolls here, but when we talk about this in the sense of mindfulness, the simple act of tuning into our thoughts, noticing them without attaching ourselves to them. We've discussed this in a number of episodes of the acceptance and commitment therapy principles, especially in season one. But if we are able to tune into our needs, our desires, learn to listen to our body and simply be present. We can get to know ourselves and feel more comfortable when different thoughts arise, or not necessarily identifying when those thoughts do arise. This way of being present in our body it can look like taking a walk, simply sitting and focusing on your breathing and seeing what thoughts come up. It can be journaling a voice note to yourself. This deep contentment and joy that we talk about and what I want for everyone listening comes from actually knowing ourselves.
07:00
Actually, this is a side note and not in this outline at all, but I am currently reading the book the Comfort Crisis and it talks about exactly this. It talks about the benefits of getting outside. It leads you to being more creative and connecting better with yourself. So it does apply absolutely. And this getting out for a walk, getting out in nature it's something as simple as what did they say? 20 minutes a day, five times times a week. That 20 minutes was like the magical number and it didn't have to be all right you need to go out in the wilderness. It was like if you live in the city, is there a park? Is there at least a street with trees lining it? The mental benefits of being around plant life were huge, and I just found that really interesting. It goes into much, much greater detail, but I think that really applies here of getting to know ourselves and being able to turn down the chatter in our brains sometimes, and sometimes all it takes is stepping outside.
07:54
One piece I do want to recognize, though, with getting to know ourselves and how vague and huge that sounds it's really uncomfortable to just sit with it, to sit down with our thoughts, to slow down enough to be alone in our brain and our bodies. But that discomfort going back to that comfort crisis book, sitting with the discomfort is actually the key here. Our lives are so busy that, one slowing down to tune in to signals our brain and our body are giving us and noticing the thoughts that come up is really difficult. Our lives are busy, our brains are noisy, there's a lot going on, and two, we tend to avoid it. We notice thoughts come up when we realize how tired we actually are or how soft with ourselves we've actually been, or something along those lines. Right, and then we try to brush it aside and keep going, and the point of this is actually tuning in and figuring out how to listen. This also, as you can imagine, involves paying attention to our self-talk. Right, we're noticing thoughts coming up, hearing what we're saying about ourselves in different situations.
08:51
If we go back, episode 13 is all about self-talk and tips and tricks, tools how to learn to pay attention to that. So how to actually learn to listen to ourselves and recognize when the thoughts are coming up. Are they actually things that we resonate with or are they just weird things that pop up sometimes that we get to learn to not attach to and let go? That is that piece. So talking about taking care of our brains, getting to know ourselves, learning how to listen to our thoughts, practicing body image flexibility. I have to apologize in this giving you so many reference points for things we've talked about quite a bit on the podcast, but those episodes I reference are worth listening to and if you have any questions about any of this ever, please feel free to reach out.
09:34
The next piece of this is taking care of our bodies. I suppose preface with this. It feels like low-hanging fruit to talk to you about respecting your body and practicing self-care, but it really sets the entire foundation of that house you're making a home If we spend the time to learn how to take care of our bodies, to stay hydrated and eat the nourishing foods. Adequate sleep and recovery, taking care of that mental, emotional health. That's how we feel better in our bodies. Like it makes sense, right, I know it's low-hanging fruit, but I wouldn't be talking about it if everyone was doing it.
10:10
If we take the time to learn the foods that make your body feel good and fuel well for all of your adventures, to learn how much sleep you need to function well. They say the minimum is seven hours a night. Some of us do great on that seven hours. Some of us actually need closer to nine or more. And it's learning. Where do I function? Well? There are so many opportunities here to get to know ourselves, like, for instance.
10:30
This seems really silly, but I remember in the early-ish days of Instagram and all of the big influencers I totally subscribed to the drink a gallon of water a day and the earn your shower and all of those things. I remember trying to drink a gallon of water a day and the earn your shower and all of those things. I remember trying to drink a gallon of water every day. I had like one of those big half gallon jugs and I was like, heck, yeah, just two of these a day and I had to pee 27 times every single day and it never got any less for me and I never actually felt like hydrated and got all the benefits that people said. I found that I do well with more of a hundred or so ounces on average, and so this is something that if you take the time to take care of your bodies and practice that self-care, you can get to know how do I function when I eat this kind of food, drink this much water, when I go to bed at this time and wake up at this time and practice really good sleep hygiene practices. You have so much that you can learn about yourself to take care of yourself.
11:24
And I guess one other side note almost 10 years ago or so, I used to do this check-in with myself every day and the acronym is HENS Hydration, exercise, nutrition, sleep, self-care. I would look back at how much water did I drink, how did I move my body today, what was my nutrition like? You know if I'm tracking macros or I'm tracking portion sizes or just to check in how many servings of plants did I eat today? And then look at sleep how many hours of sleep did I get the night before? Do I feel rested on that? Did I have good sleep hygiene practices? I went to bed within a half hour and got up within a half hour of what I normally do.
11:57
And then self-care. What is something I did today to take care of me? What did I do to tune into my mind and my body, to make sure that I am hearing things that I'm saying? If my body is screaming at me that I've been pushing myself way too hard, that I've been trying to fit too much on my plate, have I taken the time to tune into that? Have I asked how I'm doing or how I'm feeling? So that is not a science-backed thing. That is not necessarily something that I'm like hey, give this a try. But I will tell you it was a really great check-in for a really long time to make sure that I was doing those things that are low-hanging fruit. That became more of a habit Drinking enough water, moving my body every day, eating the foods that I knew took care of my body, doing those things. So, hens, hydration, exercise, nutrition, sleep, self-care. If you try it out, I would love to hear about it. But in that, hens the exercise piece, this is the other piece of taking care of your body, and that's move your body.
12:51
This is something that I keep coming back to and we include it in this episode, not to say you know, get off your ass, you lazy bitch Like. That's never what we're implying. It's to highlight the importance of regular exercise when it comes to short-term and long-term health. Not just physical health here, it's mental, emotional health as well. The link to regular exercise and improved mental health is legitimate. When we tell you to move your body, you're not going to be able to move your body. You're not going to be able to move your. Do it in ways that you enjoy, also remembering the importance of cardio and strength training, right. So if your preferred form of cardio isn't running, I might be a runner, but I'm never going to be the person that says this is what you have to do. If swimming is your jam, if bike riding is your jam, if rowing is your jam, do those things. If we want to get specific here, the ACSM guidelines, the American Academy of Sports Medicine guidelines for physical activity for ages I think it's 18 to 65, is 150 minutes a week of moderate intensity aerobic activity or 60 minutes a week of vigorous intensity cardio and then, two times a week, activities that maintain or increase muscular strength or endurance. So don't take it from me, take it from the source. Here are guidelines on the amount of time spent to maintain our health.
14:02
Okay, I feel like this episode is totally me getting on my soapbox. In some ways, I'm talking about things that I really am passionate about. I'm just taking care of yourself to feel better in your body, and so I want to turn this into a little piece of homework, if you will, and I'm titling this what Would Happen. So let's imagine for a second you listen to this episode and you're like man, I really want to start taking care of my body. What can I do? What if you chose 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, let's say, three months? It is hard to learn such a big thing in only 30 days. So let's say you're committing to 90 days, to three months, and what we're going to do in that three months is no fad diets.
14:41
Learn the basics of nutrition, of macronutrients and how they affect the body. Learn how to nourish your body. What foods feel good, fit well into your lifestyle, how does it work to eat more plants and eat adequate protein? And then, when it comes to exercise, stop program hopping, stop changing things up every week. Can you lean into learning the basics of lifting, of learning to lift heavy, and then start incorporating your preferred form of cardio in there to try and meet those ACSM guidelines? No more burning the candle at both ends. So we've talked nutrition. We talked exercise.
15:13
So when we talk self-care, can you learn the importance of that rest, sleep, recovery piece, aiming for at least seven hours a night, and then have some level of mindfulness, self-check-in, self-reflection piece to take care of that mental, emotional health, instead of this constant trying to get smaller as the only focus and the only metric? What would happen if you focused on fully taking care of your health comprehensively mental, emotional, physical for the next three months? In a perfect world, you get in those three months and you're like, oh my gosh, this is what it takes to take care of myself. And you realize it's not the fad diet, it's not cutting out food groups, it's not needing to exercise six days a week at vigorous intensities where you're wearing yourself out. It's none of that. That's what I'd love to see here. That is your homework, even if it is just committing to a week of figuring it out being curious of how your body and brain would feel if you would start to feel better in your body by learning to take care of it inside and out.
16:11
Okay, wrapping up here, one thing we didn't mention here is the influence of society and media and the world at large and how that can affect how we feel in our bodies and about our bodies. It can be such a trigger. We also didn't talk about the underlying shame that we can have about our bodies as well these two big topics that affect it. Please don't think we're diminishing them. We just simply wanted to pick the strongest, most actionable things that you can do to improve how you're feeling in your body right now. I think that when we talk about the influence of, I'm going to say, the world at large social media, media, other people, our families how those impact the way we feel in our bodies and about our bodies deserves an episode all on its own. It is one huge piece that we need to deconstruct, if you will, if we want to understand how we feel in our bodies fully. So maybe that's a future episode, but again, I did not want to dismiss the importance of those.
17:03
But feeling better in our bodies means taking care of our brains by spending time getting to know ourselves and really practicing the skills of body image flexibility. Feeling better in our bodies means taking care of our bodies Full stop. A neglected house is not a resilient house. So, friends, please consider taking part in this homework. Maybe we make it more of an official Sturdy Girl challenge, if you will, but I'd love to hear from you. We have in every one of our show notes. There is a link to send us a message. If you're interested in taking part in this, if you take part in this, if you took anything away from this episode, we would love to hear. We love to hear from our fans, from our guests, from everyone. All right, friends, we'll talk to you next Friday